Scary Stuff

Z has no tolerance for scary TV shows. When she sees something scary she emits an ear shattering shriek, yells “I’m scared!” lest we were confused as to the meaning of the shriek, and then may run and hide under the dining room table. But then she comes right back and looks at the TV again because she can’t stand not knowing what we are watching. If it is still too scary she repeats the above steps to let us know.

Examples of things she seen recently that were too scary:

1. An episode of the Waltons were the little kids steal a calf and hide it in a cave. Supposedly they were out in the dark but the scene was so well lit that it looked like noon. They were walking calmly and talking about collecting food for the calf. This was deemed mortifying.

2. The beginning of ELF where the baby in orphanage sees Santa Claus. The baby is laughing. Z was horrified.

We get a lot of TV series on DVD from Netflix. Recently the SO and I watched season one of Dollhouse. Season 2 is on hulu.com so I was watching the first episode the other day. Z walked into the room and I paused it since it wasn’t at a child friendly part. The SO walked in to see me staring at a paused video while answering the types of inane questions that only kids can come up with.

“What are you doing?”
“I was watching Dollhouse but a minor came in the room.”
“Oh, well, let’s put on something more family friendly.”

Now, he’s a guy. He decided that an episode of Smallville (we currently had season 6 from Netflix) would be just the ticket. Normally it doesn’t bother her probably because she doesn’t understand it enough to know to be scared and because violence doesn’t bother her (as her school behavioral records would attest). But in this episode in the first few minutes someone reached into another person’s abdomen and pulled out some presumably necessary organ. Then he turned and did it to someone else too. Z gasped in order to have enough air for the siren wail she unleashed next.

And here is why I should be in the running for the evil stepmother award – I burst out laughing. Glad we steered her viewing to “nicer” subjects! She was running from couch to desk chair dramatically hiding her eyes – only to peer out again seconds later to see if it was still scary. Then she would run to another room to hide. But she’d be back in less than 10 seconds to check out the screen again. The SO told her to either go stay in another room or to sit on his lap and not look at the screen if she couldn’t stay away. She couldn’t do either. She had to look. It took her a while to realize nothing scary was going on anymore. Then she got bored with the show and went away!

Oh well, at least she’ll have something to talk about in therapy some day.